When Ford Fry opened JCT. Kitchen & Bar in 2007, he seemed to accomplish the impossible. He took a proven dog of a space — two restaurants had already crashed and burned there — and turned it into a winner. Working with architect and designer Smith Hanes, he took this box of poorly lit square footage with no street visibility and only a train track for company, and showed everyone it could be a destination. The Southern menu had a few gourmet aspirations and the room a kind of “Garden & Gun” sense of farmhouse style, but the restaurant proved easygoing — at heart it remained a fun, loud place to eat fried chicken with your fingers.

John Kessler is the chief dining critic for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Ford and Hanes repeated their feat last year when they transformed the somnambulant Eurasia Bistro in Decatur into the reliably mobbed No. 246, an Italian restaurant serving wood-oven pizzas, pastas and roasted meats. Again, the menu and room were cannily